“Tell Mamma, Olga—tell Mamma.”
But the pale lips remained very gently closed. Olga, slipping back again into oblivion, kept her secret safe in her heart. Then Teresa’s will to know rose up stern and terrible, the will of those countless peasant forbears, creatures of hot suns and icy winds, of mountains and valleys and strong, brown soil; creatures who, finding no man to respect them, had made a god of their self-respect, offering the virtue of their women on his shrine, not for that virtue’s sake but for their own. And against this god in the days of her youth, at the time of the gathering in of the grapes, Teresa Boselli had passionately sinned, and had forever after hated her sin; but never more hotly than at this moment when she saw it lifting its head in her child, in Olga, who, having betrayed her mother would not betray her lover. Teresa’s thin form towered gaunt above the bed.
“Tell me!” she commanded. “Tell me!”
The girl’s lids had fallen, she was very far away; no sounds from the external world could reach her. Teresa stared down at the drawn young face, and her breast ached as though it would kill her with its pain. Groping for her rosary she tried to tell her beads, the Dolorous Mysteries, beginning in Gethsemane, and as each tragic decade came to a close she demanded the life of her child.
“Give me the fruit of my womb, Blessed Mary.”
Her prayers gathered force as her terror increased; the face on the pillow was changing, changing—it was growing very solemn, very aloof. In a passion of entreaty she dropped to her knees, pressing the rosary against her forehead until the beads scarred her flesh. In her anguish she struck at the gates of heaven, she tore at the garments of the Mother of God.
“Not like this—not like this—you spared me, spare her. I demand it of you—I demand Olga’s life! Why should her sin be greater than mine? You who were a Mother, you who knew grief—you who saw death at the foot of the Cross—you whom I have served in penitence and love—I demand it of you—give me Olga’s life!”
And Olga, drifting always farther away, lay with quiet, closed eyelids and motionless lips, giving her life’s blood, but not the secret of her loyal and impenitent heart.
Then Teresa fell to weeping; she wept without restraint, noisily, heavily—her sobs shook the bed. From time to time she drank in her own tears.
The nurse came back. “What’s the matter, what’s happened?” She laid her fingers on the girl’s thin wrist. “I must send your husband for the doctor,” she said, and she hurried downstairs to the shop.
Fabio lifted his head from his hands; he was sitting on a narrow, high-legged stool behind his sausages and cheeses. A small man, himself as rotund as a cheese, with a mild, pale face, and a ring of grey hair that gave him a somewhat monkish appearance, in spite of his white coat and apron.
“Well?” he said, blinking at her a little.
The nurse shook her head: “You must go for the doctor—any doctor if he’s out.”
Fabio got heavily off his stool, his lips were trembling: “You go,” he suggested. “I would wish to be with our Olga.”
“No, I must go back—I’m needed upstairs—but be as quick as you can.”
II
Olga was dying—the doctor came and went; he would call again later, he told them.
“Fetch me a priest!” demanded Teresa, calm as a general now before battle. “There is yet time enough for a miracle to happen, the Holy Oil has been known to save life.”
She stared across the bed at the kneeling Fabio.
“Don’t drive me from Olga—” he pleaded pitifully.
Teresa was relentless: “Do as I tell you!”
And getting to his feet he obeyed her.
III
That night, in spite of the Holy Oil, Olga went on her journey. After the great love that lay hidden in her heart, after the great anguish that lay whimpering in the basket, the spirit that was Olga slipped silently away to the Maker who would have no need to question, knowing all things and the reason thereof.
IV
Teresa demanded to be left alone with her child and the child of her child, and because of her voice and the look in her eyes, Fabio left them alone. The room was shrouded in comparative darkness. Four thin, brown candles guarded the bed. From the little red lamp in front of the Virgin came a fitful, flickering glimmer. Teresa stood over the slender body, gazing down with her hard, black eyes; then she turned and lifted the baby from his basket, a tiny lump of protesting flesh muffled in folds of flannel. From her fumed-oak bracket the Virgin watched with a gentle, deprecating smile. She could not help that deprecating smile—it was molded into plaster. Majestically, Teresa turned and faced her, and they looked at each other eye to eye. Then Teresa thrust the baby towards her, and the gesture was one of repudiation.
“Take him!” said Teresa. “I give him to you, I have no use for him. He has stolen my joy, he has killed my child, and you, you have let him do it—therefore, you can have him, body and soul, but you cannot any longer have Teresa Boselli. Teresa Boselli has done with prayer, for you cannot answer and God cannot answer—possibly neither of you exists—but if you do exist, then I give this thing to you—do as you like with it, play with it, crush it, as you crushed its mother over there!”
Fabio came up quietly behind her; he had stolen back to her unperceived. He took the baby from her very gently.
“Little Gian-Luca come to Nonno,” he murmured, pressing his cheek against the child.
II
I
Fabio reared himself up in bed. It was past midnight, and the candle was guttering prior to its final extinction. Fabio’s hair, a disheveled halo,
